BUDDHIST ILLOGIC

9.Karmic
law.

Finally, let
us consider Nagarjuna’s comments on the moral principle of ‘karma’ (as we
commonly call it). He denies karmic law – for him,
“necessary connections between good deeds and rewards, and bad deeds and
punishments” are, as Cheng describes[1],
“not objective laws in nature and society, but subjective projections of the
mind”. This is of course not an argument, but a
statement, so his reasoning cannot be evaluated. The statement is notable,
considering the context of Indian and Buddhist belief. And again, Nagarjuna
makes this statement, not out of a desire to oppose normative Buddhism, but in
an attempt to be consistent with his own overall philosophical programme of
consciousness beyond reason, the ‘middle way’.

I will take this opportunity to make
a few comments of my own regarding karma. The claim that there is moral order in
the world is partly, but only partly, based on empirical grounds. Without
prejudice as to what constitutes morality, we can agree that certain actions
have certain consequences, and that some of those actions and consequences
happen to be morally orderly by our standards. The ‘actions’ referred to are
actions of a person; the so-called ‘consequences’ referred to are things
happening to that person beyond his control.

It so happens that sometimes a person
who has acted in a way he (or an observer) considers ‘good’ (e.g. being kind
to others, or whatever) is soon after or much later a recipient of something he
(or the observer) considers ‘positive’ for himself (e.g. health or children
or wealth, whatever). Similarly, a ‘bad’ action may be followed by
‘negative’ events. In some of those cases, a causal relation may be empirically
established between the ‘action’ and ‘consequence’, without appeal to a
moral principle. For instance, the man works hard and prospers. Such cases can
be considered evidence in favor of a karmic law. In other cases, however, the
causal relation is merely assumed to occur subterraneously, because it is
not empirically evident that such ‘action’ produces such ‘consequence’.
For instance, the man gives charity and prospers. It would be begging the
question to use cases of the latter sort as evidence in favor of karmic law,
since it is only by assuming karmic lawthat we interpret the events as
causally connected.

Furthermore,
it so happens that sometimes, despite good actions, no positive consequences are
forthcoming or only negative ones follow; or despite bad actions, no negative
consequences are forthcoming or only positive ones follow. The saint suffers and
the evil man enjoys. These cases are all empirical evidence against
karmic law, granting the value judgments involved, since we are not assuming
karmic law to establish the causal relations between such actions and so-called
consequences (be they happenstance or evidently produced by the actions). Of
course, one might mitigate this conclusion somewhat, by stating that one has to
know all the life of a person because no one only suffers and no one only
enjoys, and that anyway it is difficult to estimate the merits of a good deed or
demerits of a bad deed.

Thus, whereas karmic law might be
viewed as a generalization from the cases where actions are empirically causally
connected to consequences, it cannot be inferred from the cases where such
connection is not established without presuming karmic law, and it is belied by
the cases where the order of things predicted by karmic law is not matched in
experience. In order to nevertheless justify karmic law, religions may introduce
the concept of rebirth, on earth as a human or other creature, or elsewhere, in
heaven or in hell, suggesting that if the accounts do not balance within the
current lifetime, they do in the long run balance. But again, since we have no
empirical evidence of such transmigration and the process is anyway very vaguely
described, such argument begs the question, making the assumption of karmic law
superficially more palatable, but not providing clear concept or inductive proof
of it.

Some might
hang on to karmic law all the same, by arguing that what we have been calling
good or bad, or positive or negative, was wrongly so called. These postulate
that a set of moral standards, of virtue and value, might be found, that exactly
coincide with empirically evident causal processes, or at least which are not
belied by such processes. Good luck.

But
what bothers me most about the assumption of karmic law is this: it logically
implies that whoever suffers must have previously done evil. For instance,
the millions of Jews (including children) murdered by the Nazis during the
Holocaust. This seems to me an unforgivable injustice – it is an assertion
that there are no innocent victims of crime and that criminals are
effectively agents of justice! Thus, in the name of morality, in the name of
moral order – merely to satisfy a ‘rationalist’ impulse to uphold a ‘law
of karma’ – justice is turned upside-down and made to accuse the
innocent and exonerate the guilty. Clearly, the idea of karmic law is inherently
illogical. We have to conclude that the world functions differently than such a
principle implies.

We seem to
have reached, with regard to karma, the same negative conclusion as Nagarjuna,
though perhaps through a different argument. If there is no karmic law, is there
then no need for liberation, no utility to virtue and meditation? It does not
follow. Even if souls come and go, like bubbles in water, it may be good for
them to realize their true nature while they are around. ‘Virtue is its own
reward’ and the benefits of meditation are obvious to anyone engaged in it.

[1]See p. 88. Cheng there refers to MT
XVII:1-33, XXIV:18, and Hui-cheng-lun, 72, as well as to TGT II.

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